


Errant Spirit

by zenstrike



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Death, Dreams vs. Reality, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Ghost/Spirit, Happy Ending, Identity Issues, M/M, Romance, as always, half-vietnamese keith, keith feels lots of things and he feels them loudly, true love is the most powerful magic of all OKAY, vaguely spiritual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 15:31:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20566676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenstrike/pseuds/zenstrike
Summary: “You were gone for a while,” Keith says softly, pressing his cheek to Lance’s hair. He breathes him in: lavender and caramel and sunlight. Lance breathes against his neck. “I was worried you wouldn’t come back.”“You weren’t,” Lance laughs.“I was. I was—”“It doesn’t last, Keith,” Lance says, the laughter gone from his voice. He’s impatient, now, afraid—maybe. “You’ll wake up and you’ll forget. That’s how this works.”This, Keith thinks. This works, Keith thinks.





	Errant Spirit

**Author's Note:**

> hello!! this was the piece i wrote for the [Words Collide zine](https://wordscollide-klancezine.tumblr.com/). there's a lot i could say about this fic and its inspiration, but alkdjfaldfja.
> 
> anyways i hope you enjoy it!!!!

Keith has half-memories of incense and altars high above his head. He smells them—he sees them—when he pauses at the grocery store and drags his fingers over oranges and mangoes, feeling the shape of them and imagining the taste on his tongue. Sometimes he gives in to instinct and takes his time, feeling each fruit and searching for the one with the sweetest smell and the firmest skin. He holds it up to the fluorescent lights of the store and he squints at it and he squeezes, once, just to be sure that it’s perfect enough.

He cradles a grapefruit in his lap on the drive home and he sets it on the shelf above his headboard before he lays down to sleep. He’s hesitant to call the prayer what it is so he just taps the dustless spot on the shelf to the left of the fruit, and he sinks into his pillows and his blankets and he closes his eyes.

A chill brushes his cheek just as he drifts to sleep, just when he’s so close to the edge that he wants to reach out but his dreams drag him away.

When he opens his eyes, his little apartment is filled with soft light and there’s a smell he can’t quite recognize: sour and sweet; cloying and relaxing. Keith twitches his hands against his sheets. He sucks in a breath and holds it in his chest until he burns.

He turns his head and Lance looks down at him, smiling a crooked half-smile that makes Keith’s heart stutter.

“Hi,” Keith says.

“Hey.”

Keith doesn’t move, afraid suddenly to break the spell, because there’s something different about Lance, now, something off and a little less bright. Keith tries not to blink.

Lance looks to the little shelf above Keith’s bed. His smile twitches and grows. “You brought me a grapefruit.”

“I guess I did.”

Lance lifts a hand, stops, and looks away from the shelf. When their eyes meet next, he seems more like himself—his eyes seem the right shade of blue: bright enough to drown in.

“Where have you been?” Keith asks, his mouth dry.

Lance hums. “I thought I’d visit my mom,” he says easily but he doesn’t look away so Keith can see the flinch of pain at the edges of his lips and his eyes. “She cried.”

Keith doesn’t reply.

They could do anything, he knows. His memories and his awareness are seeping slowly back and he can see them wandering the streets outside his building and he can hear Lance’s laughter as he drags his fingers against the leaves of the bushes outside the elementary school.

Keith shifts and rolls onto his side, backing up until his back hits the wall. He flips the blankets aside.

“Come here.”

Lance does and says nothing, for a moment, and then he kicks off his shoes. He’s warm and long when he squirms down next to Keith and he settles with a sigh when Keith tosses the blankets over them both. They fit together easily, their legs tangling and Lance pressing his face to Keith’s neck.

“You were gone for a while,” Keith says softly, pressing his cheek to Lance’s hair. He breathes him in: lavender and caramel and sunlight. Lance breathes against his neck. “I was worried you wouldn’t come back.”

“You weren’t,” Lance laughs.

“I was. I was—”

“It doesn’t last, Keith,” Lance says, the laughter gone from his voice. He’s impatient, now, afraid—maybe. “You’ll wake up and you’ll forget. That’s how this works.”

This, Keith thinks. This works, Keith thinks.

“One day I won’t wake up,” he says into Lance’s hair.

Lance tenses in his arms. Keith remembers to hold on too late and then Lance is pulling back and looking down at him and all the rest of the world fades to a pinprick in his eyes. “Don’t,” Lance says, low and warning.

“Don’t go,” Keith says, or tries to, and then he wakes.

His heart thuds in his chest. He licks his lips. He stares at the light from the street on his ceiling. He sits up, when he feels strong enough, and leans heavily on one of his hands as he turns to look at the fruit on the shelf.

He pushes his other hand through his hair, and he can’t remember what he was dreaming.

* * *

He’s lived in his little bachelor’s suite for a little over two years. Sometimes, strange things happen.

“The building’s haunted,” Shiro jokes.

Keith usually remembers to laugh.

It’s a nice building. He likes his apartment. He’s got underground parking and the elevator works most days. The neighbourhood’s nice and generally quiet. It’s all starting to feel like home and he’s terrified of all of it ending and of the scattered drafts of his honours project on his kitchen counter and on his couch.

“You’ll be done on time,” his supervisor tells him with a smile and a thumbs-up and Keith tries to return at least the smile.

He’s unsettled. Maybe he’s been unsettled for a long time—because, sometimes, strange things happen to him.

At first, it was a chill like a fever down his spine that made him jump and told him that his _ fight _ response was much stronger than his _ flight _. He broke two plates and a mug. Stuff started moving: his textbooks, his post-its, his backpack, his shoes, the little bottles of ginger beer he liked to splurge on.

And then he started waking up exhausted and aching and his head screaming like he’d been crying. Or rested and energized and grinning.

Sometimes while walking through the students’ union building, buying coffee he can’t afford, and he catches himself turning to tell a story to someone who isn’t there.

Strange things happen.

* * *

What Keith doesn’t remember is meeting a boy in his dreams, sitting on his couch, and the furious way he’d said: “Who the hell are _ you _?”; and the surprised scramble of the boy, and the gasping way he’d said: “You can see me?”

He doesn’t remember Lance, when he’s awake, but he aches for him all the same.

* * *

Shiro visits. Keith’s apartment unsettles him. Makes him look over his shoulder for things that aren’t there. Keith likes to tease him about it.

“What’s that?” Shiro asks, nodding towards the little shelf above Keith’s bed.

Once upon a time, he’d kept books and photos on it. Now—

“A grapefruit,” Keith replies with a shrug.

Shiro considers him. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Keith complains but leads the way outside all the same. It’s a cloudy day. He can’t tell if it’s early spring or late winter. He zips up his coat.

Being with Shiro feels like home. Shiro doesn’t make him talk. Shiro’s as comfortable with silence as Keith is. Sometimes, they pass whole hours together communicating in gestures or frowns or that easy way Shiro shrugs. Home is quiet. Peaceful. His dad was quiet, too.

Sometimes Keith feels like he misses noise. 

Someone’s left flowers at the street corner down the block, where the slowly dying bakery and the fresh new bookshop meet.

Shiro makes a noise. Keith glances at him.

“Accident?” Keith asks.

“Don’t you remember?” Shiro says, and touches his chin in a thoughtful, distracting gesture. “Just before you moved in?”

Keith doesn’t remember. He looks down at the flowers and a faded photo. It doesn’t do those eyes justice.

“He’s young,” Keith mutters.

“Yeah,” Shiro agrees, his voice heavy. He touches Keith’s elbow and Keith makes himself look away.

The boy in the photo is all he can think of.

* * *

That night, Keith sits up in his bed and looks towards Lance, perched on the back of Keith’s battered couch and looking straight back at him.

Nothing does those eyes justice.

“Lance,” Keith starts, and then his voice dies in his throat. He shakes his head. He clears his throat. Lance watches him toss away his blankets and swing his legs over the edge of the bed. 

Lance is so still. He barely breathes.

It’s four steps to Lance. Keith counts them as he goes, his body feeling huge in the dim, orange light of his apartment. He thinks the grapefruit shines on the shelf (the altar) behind him but he doesn’t look.

“I’m going to find you,” Keith says. Lance takes his hands when he reaches out. They twist their fingers together and Keith wants to close his eyes and revel in it, feel the warmth and familiarity of it.

But Lance’s eyes catch him. And Lance’s frown freezes him.

“Don’t make me say it again,” Lance says. Or pleads.

Keith holds on tight. Lance barely breathes. Lance _ barely breathes _—

“I love you,” Keith says. “You’re real to me.”

Lance blinks, and then he smiles and he throws his head back and he laughs and the sound sparks something like fireworks in Keith’s chest. He prays for himself: remember—remember—remember. Lance releases his hands and Keith wants to scream at the lost contact and then Lance slips his arms around Keith’s neck. Keith stumbles into him and tastes laughter on Lance’s lips.

“Of course I’m real,” Lance whispers, like someone could overhear them. Like someone could catch them. “I’m just dead.”

* * *

He has a month left in his degree.

He’s exhausted. He wakes in the morning already desperate to go back to sleep. There’s an ache in his bones he doesn’t recognize and sometimes he stops in the middle of a hall, partway up a flight of stairs, with a book half pulled from the library shelf, and he feels—

Too much.

He shakes, a little. He grimaces and he thinks of incense and prayer and breaths barely felt, and he becomes sure he can’t keep on like this.

And then there’s a warmth at his back. Like someone propping him up. His exhaustion bleeds away, just for a moment, and Keith wants to close his eyes and see but he forces himself upright and into motion and he carries on.

Carrying on is what he does best, after all.

* * *

He never works up the courage to ask Lance what his “unfinished business” is. He never works up the courage to call his love what it is: a haunting.

* * *

“That makes me sure you’ll be okay.”

Keith opens his eyes and blinks up at Lance, smiling down at him. They’re comfortable on Keith’s couch, Lance lounging with an arm over the back and his other hand in Keith’s hair. Keith’s legs half-dangle off the edge of the couch. He’s as comfortable as he’s ever been. He’s afraid to wake up.

“What do you mean?” he says, almost whispers.

Lance hums. “You know,” he says, his fingers soft against Keith’s scalp. “When I go to the great Wherever.”

“You’re real,” Keith grumbles, straining to keep his eyes open and his vision of Lance clear. He feels a little like a broken record. Maybe this is what a haunting feels like: warmth in his chest, in his belly, in his hands; desperate, aching longing for someone he’s only touched in his dreams.

“I feel like you’re not really listening.”

“I’m listening.” Keith huffs a breath and feels his sleeping body drag against the dream, heavy with irritation. “I’m just not remembering.”

“You’re not supposed to,” Lance says. His hand stills. Keith tries not to squirm. “My mom didn’t remember. But she got up the next day and she—”

Keith waits.

Lance looks up, staring at the blank screen of Keith’s TV. Any moment, Keith thinks, Lance could fade into nothing and float into the great big Wherever.

He squeezes his hands together to keep from holding on too tight.

“She moved on,” Lance continues eventually, sounding thoughtful. “I felt that. I couldn’t walk back into her dreams if I wanted to.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s a good thing,” Lance says. “I think that’s the point: letting go.” His lips twitch. “That’s why you have to forget.”

It doesn’t feel like the goodbye that it is.

“I think you’re the only thing keeping me here,” Lance whispers just before Keith wakes up with the ghost of Lance’s lips against his.

* * *

“You look awful,” Shiro says, sliding a pizza box onto Keith’s kitchen counter.

“Sleep’s gone to shit,” Keith mutters.

He feels rather than sees Shiro look towards the shelf above his bed and the collection of oranges and a kiwi and the grapefruit. He eats his first slice of pizza in two-three-four bites.

* * *

Two weeks. No dreams. He knows he sleeps but he wakes up sore and exhausted. Something’s missing.

He clears the fruit off the shelf. He holds them in a bowl. They’re still so colourful. They’re fragrant and smell like remembering.

It makes him want to punch a wall.

He doesn’t know why he does it. The usual warmth at his neck, at the small of his back, turns cold when he troops out of his building and down the street. It’s early. He’s wearing nothing but his sweats and the cool spring air makes goosebumps flutter along his arms. He grinds his teeth so hard he’s sure they’ll all break.

“What the fuck,” Keith mutters to himself, barefoot on the street corner. “What the _ fuck _.”

His plan, such as it is, is to dump the fruit on the sidewalk. Leave it. Walk away.

He kneels, instead, and counts his breaths as he sets the fruit in a delicate pattern that makes him think of his father. The flowers watch him. The picture of the boy is almost too faded to see.

* * *

He dreams, that night.

“Keith,” Lance says. “Keith—what did you do?”

The dream smells like incense. Keith’s relief is so intense he stumbles trying to get to Lance, just across his little apartment, just standing there with his hands and his eyes and his parted lips.

“Lance,” he breathes.

* * *

He doesn’t dream of Lance again. He doesn’t remember to miss him.

* * *

He walks by the empty street corner every day and doesn’t remember that something’s missing.

* * *

Last week of term, and it’s hot. The sun’s so bright Keith’s shoulders are starting to freckle under his shirt and his jacket. Shiro’s lectured him twice about not getting his grad photos, his grad ring.

Keith just wants it all to be over.

He’s waiting for his next class to start, standing still and grumpy in the stuffy hallways of the brown humanities building. He can hear whispering down the hall and the echo of a professor’s voice from a classroom.

“Keith,” someone says behind him.

He’s never heard his name sound like that: breathless and relieved and surprised all at once. Like someone’s been looking for him.

Keith turns, hands in his pockets, and something loud stirs in his chest.

The boy looks at him, his eyes more vibrantly blue than any picture or any dream could capture, and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! if you liked it, come say hello on [twitter](https://twitter.com/zenstrikeff) or [tumblr](http://zenstrike.tumblr.com/)!!


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